Daredevil Nik Wallenda gets jeans for life

Preacher Joel Osteen, left, leads a prayer with Nik Wallenda, second from left, his wife, Erendira, daughter Evita and son Yanni before Wallenda walked a 2-inch-thick steel cable that took him a quarter-mile over the Little Colorado River Gorge in northeastern Arizona on Sunday.

Preacher Joel Osteen, left, leads a prayer with Nik Wallenda, second from left, his wife, Erendira, daughter Evita and son Yanni before Wallenda walked a 2-inch-thick steel cable that took him a quarter-mile over the Little Colorado River Gorge in northeastern Arizona on Sunday. (Tiffany Brown / AP)

Susan Denley

After aerialist Nik Wallenda crossed a gorge near the Grand Canyon via tightrope on Sunday, he came home with more than the kind of souvenir T-shirt one might pick up near a major national park.

Besides the publicity that such a feat attracts -- it was broadcast on Discovery Channel, after all -- and besides his gratitude at making the 22-minute walk without incident (he wore no safety harness and prayed aloud a lot during the journey, as well as with preacher Joel Osteen ahead of time), he has ended up with a lifetime supply of jeans for himself, his wife and kids.

Wallenda, 34, wore Buffalo David Bitton "Six" style jeans for the walk, as noted here on Monday. The jeans maker was so thrilled that it announced it would rename the style the "Nik."

The company now has erected a billboard in New York's Times Square paying homage to Wallenda's feat -- it shows a picture of him in mid-walk with the message, "Dear Nik, Thanks for taking us to new heights. Buffalo David Bitton."

And, a spokesoman confirmed, they've offered Wallenda, his circus performer wife Erendira and their children, Yanni, Amadaos and Evita, jeans for the rest of their lives.

In a bit of punnery, the jeans maker's website also sports a photo of Wallenda, a seventh-generation performer, in mid-walk, with the statement: "It must be in his genes."